Road of 10,000 Pains by Otto J. Lehrack

Author:Otto J. Lehrack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Voyageur Press
Published: 2010-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Captain Joe Gibbs, center, with two of his Marines from Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. Gibbs’s company made a classic attack against an enemy force in the open and killed sixty-five of them without taking a single casualty. Courtesy Andres Vaart

Lieutenant Andres Vaart was one of Capt. Joe Gibbs’s platoon commanders in Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines. Courtesy Andres Vaart

While we were moving to this position, Lieutenant Colonel Nelson kept his eye on the enemy and told us to move faster. I had a disciplined company that was used to moving fast, and I had good officers. We were probably moving faster than we should have but were moving well. I talked with Nelson the whole time, and he called in fixed-wing close air support on the enemy with my permission. When the air ran out of ordnance and I asked for strafing and dummy runs to fix the NVA in place, Nelson recommended artillery, which I rejected since I didn’t want to slow us down. We got the dummy runs and strafing, and all this time, Nelson was urging more speed. We finally found the enemy on a slight rise, a flat piece of ground on an embankment. We quickly formed a two-platoon assault line, went right and left, and spread out as we lifted the dummy runs, and we charged up the hill when the last airplane went over.

IT WAS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF A RIFLE COMPANY in the attack, just like the officers were trained to do at Quantico. The two lead platoon commanders, Lts. Victor Burlingame and Andres Vaart, shouted their orders, and the squad leaders passed them on and led from the front. The Marines completely surprised the enemy. Lieutenant Alex Wells said there were “Charlies running everywhere in mass confusion.”

Capt. Joe Gibbs: We had hand-to-hand combat and killed every one of them in that position. We caught them with their heads down. There were about forty bodies there. We only had one walking wounded and no medevacs and no KIAs.

Cpl. Santos Salinas: It makes all the humping worthwhile when you hit them like that.

Capt. Joe Gibbs: Our movement to the LZ for pickup took us through Brigadier General LaHue’s command post. The general was standing out in front of his tent when we passed by. I felt so good I started humming the Marines’ Hymn, and all the troops picked it up and started humming too.

THE MAIN PHASE OF COCHISE ended on August 18 as Task Force X-ray withdrew the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. There was little contact between then and the twenty-eighth, when the operation officially ended. Enemy casualties were 156 killed and 13 captured. Marines lost 10 killed and 93 wounded.

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